Founding Robotics ML Research Engineer

This range is provided by Hartley Co. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

$/yr - $/yr

A new venture-backed robotics startup is building the next generation of autonomous systems designed to monitor and maintain the world’s digital infrastructure. The team consists of engineers with deep experience in robotics, machine learning, manipulation, control, and real-world deployment across defense, agriculture, logistics, and industrial inspection.

We are now hiring a Founding Robotics ML Research Engineer to help bring intelligent, dependable autonomous systems to some of the most critical and fastest-growing technical environments on the planet.

As a Founding Robotics ML Research Engineer, you will:

• Develop and deploy modern behavior-cloning and reinforcement-learning policies for dexterous manipulation tasks, focusing on real-world reliability and high success rates.
• Build and lead software infrastructure for large-scale data collection, model training, and real-time robotic operation.
• Stay on the frontier of robotics learning research and translate new ideas into production-ready systems.
• Help define the technical vision and engineering culture for a company at its earliest, most formative stage.

This is a true zero-to-one role with massive autonomy. No legacy code. No bureaucracy. Just an engineering team turning state-of-the-art research into deployed, practical robots.

• Background in Robotics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related fields (MS/PhD preferred).
• Demonstrated work with learning-based control and perception algorithms on real robotic systems.
• Strong grounding in classical manipulation, control theory, and motion planning.
• Familiarity with teleoperation techniques and data-driven manipulation pipelines.
• Comfort working in small, fast-paced teams where experimentation is constant and outcomes matter.

• Publications or contributions to top-tier conferences (ICRA, CoRL, RSS, NeurIPS, CVPR, etc.).
• Experience with embedded AI or edge model deployment.
• Contributions to open-source robotics or ML projects.
• Experience deploying robots in production or industrial environments.
• Exposure to tactile sensing in manipulation tasks.

You’ll be part of a founding team shaping every layer of the organization — from culture to codebase to the robots themselves. Your work will directly influence the direction of the company and the capabilities of the systems deployed in the field.

This is a role for someone who thinks deeply, moves fast, and loves building robotics systems that actually work in the real world.

📈 Competitive early-stage equity

Mid-Senior level

Full-time